Richie McCaw, just about the finest player in the 17-year history of professional rugby union and a World Cup-winning captain to boot, has never been one to get ahead of himself – hence his understandable decision to concentrate body and soul on today's Bledisloe Cup game with Australia rather than cast his mind forward to the task of chasing down those titans from… wait for it… Lithuania.

It was party time at Exeter as the Chiefs marked their 50th Aviva Premiership match with a 42-28 victory over Harlequins that earned them a try-scoring bonus point and prevented the visitors from going back to the top of the table.

Bath, in dire need of a strong start to the Premiership season after missing out on Europe with a below-the-fold finish last time out, suffered a heavy blow yesterday when their best player, the South African flanker Francois Louw, was recalled by the Springboks for the next tranche of southern hemisphere Rugby Championship games.

"We know how tall they are, how much they weigh, how old they are, where they play their rugby…and there's no video footage of them whatsoever." So said Simon Hardy, one of England's assistant coaches, as he weighed up the prospects for this afternoon's meeting with the South African Barbarians in Kimberley. If Hardy was in full head-scratching mode when it came to the opposition, he was far more clued-up on what matters to the tourists. "We have to get some momentum into this trip after the Test in Durban," he remarked. "You do that by winning games."

A bruised and beaten England, aching in every limb, left Durban for the thin air of South Africa's biggest city yesterday with the centre Brad Barritt on their minds. By the time they landed, the bad news had shifted towards the full-back Mike Brown. If Barritt, who suffered a gruesome eye injury in the first Test with the Springboks at Kings Park, may yet play a further part in this series, Brown is officially off tour, with damaged thumb ligaments.